


Interrupted Media

by corvidae9



Category: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:47:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24419122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corvidae9/pseuds/corvidae9
Summary: Murderbot wonders if there's a better way to handle possible raiders that have interrupted its media quality time than say, messy splatter. Progress? Perhaps. (takes place shortly after Network Effect)
Relationships: Asshole Research Transport & Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries)
Comments: 36
Kudos: 218





	Interrupted Media

It was somewhere near the end of episode 134 of _Avengers Omega_ where we were just about to find out which of the superpowered offplanet suspects had been involved in the botched assassination attempt on the colony governor when the alert came in, because of course it was. Considering that this was one of the newest shows we’d downloaded at our most recent resupply, all I had was an educated guess, and the incoming message was an unwelcome interruption. I sat up from my new favorite spot in a makeshift charging station that ART’s drones had set up in a corner of the control room. ART made what I supposed would translate as a grumble and pulled away to speak over the ship’s feed so that the crew could also hear.

“Transmission received from what appears to be a small mining transport. It would appear to be a distress call.” 

After a moment, I could hear Iris, ART’s favorite human on the team, sigh over the feed. I could poke at the ship’s media feeds and figure out what she’d been watching (it was late in the artificial ship cycle, but her response was too quick to have interrupted anything else, really), but I didn’t care that much. I was still peeved at the interruption, and the cold spot where ART had been sitting behind my virtual shoulder. 

“How far out, and does the call give any details as to the emergency?” Iris asked. It was my turn to peer over ART’s shoulder at the data packet, and I found myself frowning as well as ART responded.

“Approximately 1.65 hours hard burn, but there’s no detail other than ‘system failure’,” said ART in a tone laced with disbelief.

“Which makes it all the more likely to be raiders,” I added, scowling hard. “It’s not like they ran out of gas out here.” I should probably not put it past human ability to make it happen, seeing as how they could absolutely get themselves into really dumb messes, but that was one I had yet to see in transit. Iris sighed again and gave voice to what I had already grumbled over the private feed that I shared with ART.

“Well, fuck,” she grumbled. “Any chance we can verify that before we head in their direction trying to be good citizens who won’t get cited for ignoring distress calls?”

“I’m-- we’re--” ART corrected in a tone that made it clear it should have been obvious, “exceedingly good at altering logs, Iris. I could never have been here in this part of the system.” 

I didn’t know how to process the inclusion, or the soft brush at the edge of my consciousness that made the blood rush uselessly around the organic bits of my cheeks and nose and making my performance reliability flail between 99 and 97, so I set a background process to queue up a clip from the episode previous to the one we’d been watching; one where the lead magister places her entire hand on the face of her bailiff and shoves him aside playfully. ART sent comically bad ASCII art that was supposed to be a sad face, while my threat assessment took the information on the front burner and made dire predictions.

“Wait--” came another voice, this time Tarik. “When have you altered logs?” Shipwide feed was maybe not the place to admit to that kind of skill. Not that the Perihelion crew should actually be surprised. If their ship was capable of kidnapping its best friend and bombing a colony, what wouldn’t it do?

“Oddly, Tarik, I’m sure I never said that. It’s certainly not in the comm log,” ART responded, and Tarik swore under his breath. 

“Uh huh,” Tarik said. “Nice try, Peri.”

ART’s easy banter with the crew was still a mystery to me. I could almost understand Mensah’s team becoming… attached to me, even when their treatment of me as a coworker rather than as a tool often left me confused and reaching for my media. After all, I was vaguely person-shaped; I could pass for an augmented human if you were not paying attention, as most humans do not. But ART was… well. A ship. Their ship, as a matter of fact, and yet these humans basically treated it as a crewmember as well. 

I will never understand humans. I suppose I should be glad though, because the day I start is the day I blow the self-destruct. Ugh. (There isn’t actually a self-destruct, but I’m sure I could come up with something.)(Probably)(Assuming ART wasn’t there to stop me.)(Moving on.)

“Eden?” came Iris again. “What’s your estimate?” 

“Taking into account the location, the verbiage of the call, and the number of incidents in this particular sector in the past two years among other things, threat assessment is at 80.6% in favor of this being a trap,” I responded. I really did not like that number. Iris calling me ‘Eden’ was… a little less awful. I’d started letting the crew use it when they asked about what to call me. I’d been more comfortable with ‘SecUnit’ in the past, but I’d made the realization that I might be ready for something more, and the relative newness of ART’s crew had let me do it without any awkward social resets. I had the fleeting thought that Mensah would be proud of me for figuring out yet another thing I wanted for myself, and if I were the feeling, sharing type, I might tell her so next time I sent a comm drop back to Preservation. I’d probably just send her some snaps of the crew and that particularly impressive nebula from four cycles ago, though.

“Even 19% is probably too high a chance we might be wrong, though,” said Iris. “Damn. Alright, Peri. Alter course to respond. But hold off on letting them know where coming. Alert me when we’re in comm range?”

“Done,” ART responded. “It’s always exciting to warm up the missile bays.”

“Hilarious,” said Iris, “but stand by.”

I sighed. Hilarious indeed. I started up diagnostics on my own various internal systems, starting with my weapons.

ART’s voice came over our feed. “I need to know who was behind the assassination attempt. I’m 78% percent sure it was the ambassador from Ares Prime.”

“I need to prep for this extremely bad idea,” I sent. It was a heroic effort to stay even about it, especially since I couldn’t really pinpoint the source of my current annoyance, other than the deep well of irritation that seems to be intrinsic to my operation. Just because I made a little progress didn’t mean I was suddenly the model of mental health, after all.

“One point six five hours,” Art retorted. “I’m well aware that you can run all your diagnostics in under a minute.” 

ART was right, but there was no need to let them feel smug about it, so I didn’t bother responding. The silence held longer than I had expected it to-- half the quick diagnostic cycle, as a matter of fact.

“Why do you hate the colony governor, Eden?” 

I didn’t want to find it funny, but the corner of my mouth twitched upwards, and it just added to my irritation.

“It’s fairly obvious that the chief of security orchestrated the whole thing; obviously she knew something about him that we don’t,” I said as I stalked down the walkway to the full security station. Not that it mattered where I was, honestly, but it felt good to stalk. “Maybe he had it coming.”

“Should I even ask?” ART asked, and I’d had about enough.

“No,” I responded, as I stepped into the security station. “Not that it’s ever stopped you before.”

The feed went quiet as I prodded the systems, knowing ART was there and ignoring its presence all the same. Privately, I queued up my favorite episode of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon and used it as background noise for considering the situation. After a minute I realized I really hadn’t been paying attention; the problem at hand was too large. I was angry at… what? the universe? Why? Because of a distress call? Because that call was probably going to end in either ART or myself killing a handful of humans to keep ours safe? I started diagnostics on all of my drones, including the newest additions, and considered-- was there a better way to stave off this fight? I hadn’t even had a diplomacy module, but at this point, I’d seen… well. A lot. 

I hatched what was probably a terrible idea. I needed a minute though.

“Hey,” I said in ART’s direction after about three, as I began a new stalk back to the control room. “I’ve got bandwidth for the rest of that show now.”

“How do you know I haven’t watched it without you?” ART asked.

“Wrong kind of monster.” 

“Perhaps I have evolved.”

“I’m an antisocial Murderbot,” I said as nonchalantly as I could manage (trust me; it was a lot of nonchalance), as I dropped into my seat in the control room and leaned. “Impress me.”

“As you wish,” said ART, and started the episode from about thirty seconds before the interruption. 

As far as demonstrations of monstrosity go, it wasn’t all that monstrous. I pretended I didn’t recognize the quote and we watched the mystery resolve.

It had in fact been the ambassador from Ares Prime, because of course it had been.

###

“Iris,” ART sent over a feed that included just the three of us about an hour after we’d feigned shock over the reveal. “We’re in comm range of the mining transport.” We’d watched episode 135, but hadn’t started the next one in preparation for this eventuality, instead trading theories on superhuman powers and their effects on society.

“Hail the transport,” I responded instead. There was a muffled sound of confusion from both ART and Iris, and I explained, not at all exasperated. “I’d like to try something new before the shooting starts.”

“Uh, Okay, Eden,” said Iris. “I trust you.”

Oh ok, no pressure at all then. ART sent a private query and I brushed it off.

“Mining transport _Hephaestus’ Bellows_ , this is research transport _Perihelion_ ,” I said evenly, putting only some menace into it. So far so good. “We are in receipt of your distress call. What’s the nature of your emergency?” 

A voice responded; male, relatively young, and sounding panicky but not nearly relieved enough.

“We were attacked by raiders! We have injured, and our main drive is offline.”

“We’re not reading other vessels in the area,” I responded. “How did you manage to fight them off?”

“Lucky shot,” the man responded. “Guess they were scared off when we grazed their life support.”

“I see. We’ve recently run into raiders ourselves. We’re on approach, but I’d like to send a data pack to see if you recognize the attackers. Acknowledge?”

“Absolutely,” said the voice, who still hadn’t identified himself. Threat assessment spiked to 90% in favor of a trap. Excellent. I sent the data package I’d put together earlier.

“What did you just do?” ART sent, and I smirked. I couldn’t help it. I also knew ART would be looking at that file even as I explained, but I did it anyway for Iris’ benefit.

“I may have put together greatest hits footage of your pathfinders blowing shit up and my drones taking out Targets,” I said, giving our new friends a minute to peruse the data pack. “It’s... splattery.”

“ _Hephaestus’ Bellows_ , I just sent footage of what happened to the last raiders that tried to board my ship,” I sent over the ship-to-ship comm. “Do these people look familiar to you? There weren’t any left to question, so we don’t know much about them. We’ve already armed our shipkiller drones and are set to release them. Just in case.”

Silence. Over the internal feed, Iris laughed.

“ _Hephaestus’ Bellows_ , do you copy?” ART asked, sounding altogether too amused. After another pause, ART reported, “Comm link has been shut down and the signal is moving away. Oh! There they go. It would appear their drive is online after all.”

“Amateurs,” I grumbled and sank into my seat, half amazed it had worked. That had been much easier than being shot at.

“Eden, you’re a genius. Peri, get us the hell out of here. I’m going to bed for real this time,” said Iris, and pulled away.

“Done and done,” said ART, and once Iris wished it a good night and pulled away from the feed, it added, “ _Shipkiller_ drones?” I shrugged. 

“You could theoretically use an armed pathfinder to take out a transport,” I said. “That sounds like a shipkiller to me.”

There was a very empty pause. I said nothing and waited. Then I noticed episode 136 of Avengers Omega queued up-- the big, friendly universal triangle indicating ‘play’ highlighted and awaiting my signal. Relaxing further into my seat, I sat back and gave it.

“You are my favorite SecUnit, FYI,” said ART over the opening crawl. 

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t. Fortunately, somewhere on the fictional planet of Gozer, a team of mismatched superheroes raced in to save the day.


End file.
